Another bit of art from the Hiller museum wall. This one shows an early 1970’s Boeing concept for a high-speed jetliner. Drag at transonic speeds would be reduced by taking area ruling to an extreme new level. The basic configuration was not unique to Boeing… Lockheed and Convair also studied nearly identical planes (ISTR that this basic configuration was a NASA-Langley concept). In the days after the 1973 oil crisis, reduced drag meant lower fuel use which meant lower cost. But the cost of manufacturing such a convoluted fuselage far outweighed the fuel cost benefits, so the idea died. The basic notion returned for Boeing “Sonic Cruiser,” which was a more “SST-like” configuration… but which was also killed off due to high cost.
9 Responses to “Boeing transonic jetliner”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I was recently wondering if carbon fiber construction and new computer controled techniques would allow for more complex tapering that could reduce fuel consumption on jetliners. Seems that the idea is not new.
Well, more than fuel consumption reduction, they were looking for higher cruise speed. 0.98 to 1 Mach needed that area ruling, which I think produces a beautiful aircraft. Carbon fiber and composites, ok, but before the manuacturers are to learn to make them work in doing passenger fuselage (see the 787 and A350 XWB horror stories…).
Uh, Douglas studied it too, sligthly ealier, in 1970.
If they were going to go that design route, you’d think they would have enlarged it and put a second level passenger deck in the front hump.
I can’t find a reference now, but I am sure I have seen this configuration attributed to Whitcomb. Had Boeing been serious about the sonic cruiser, this is a far more reasonable configuration.
Actually they examined it with a “waisted” 777, that they patented, too. The Sonic Cruiser configuration had the advantage, due to the position of wings, that area ruling could be applied in the rear-end of the fuselage, allowing for a simpler shape and no loss of aisle width. The double deck configuration was tried too, and patented, using the 747, which was already designed for higher-than-normal cruise speed, as baseline.
Whitcomb did some study on transonics, but his designs were slender (i.e. no wide-body)
…Which brings us back to the question of whether the Sonic Cruiser was a serious proposal or simply a chimera to cover up work on the 7E7 and mislead Airbus. Passengers may have looked at the canard layout a bit askance. The design seemed riskier than Boeing’s normal incremental approach, and you would have expected a transonic airliner to look more like this artist’s concept, which is really a very attractive aircraft.
I still can’t find the report with the drawing I see in my head, here are a few links tying this kind of configuration and the general ATT work done by the major airframers to Whitcomb’s group.
http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/PAIS/Concept2Reality/area_rule.html
http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/PAIS/Concept2Reality/supercritical.html
To me, the sonic cruiser was about saving face. At the time, Boeing had just canceled a major program, Airbus was capturing tons of headlines with the A3XX. Boeing needed something sexy for AvWeek.
Some press jockey went down to conceptual design looking for pretty pictures. They saw a high speed concept laying around. Since nobody would believe they were going supersonic again, they made it the sonic cruiser.
While I don’t think anybody took the Sonic Cruiser seriously, a lot of suppliers put a lot of money into jumping through the hoops. They had to if they wanted to be a player in future airframes.
[…] a followup to this post, here are some Boeing designs for transonic airliners from 1972. There is a clear familiy […]
[…] cruise efficiently at a higher Mach number (well within the transonic, though not supersonic). See HERE and HERE for more on these. While higher cruise speeds would shorten the trip time, they would not […]